‘If it cost me my life to save 1 child, I still would come’

Posted: 3/19/07

‘If it cost me my life to save
1 child, I still would come’

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

ADDIS ADABA, Ethiopia—Getahun Tesema successfully escaped from Ethiopia during civil war 20 years ago. But he could not escape a single image that gripped him on a return visit to his homeland.

“I saw a child in a dumpster, eating what he could find. I couldn’t stop crying. The Lord moved me and used that to call me to Ethiopia.

“I determined that if it cost me my life to save one child, I still would come back,” he said.

True to his word, he returned to Ethiopia to found Bright Hope, a ministry that offers shelter, foster care and educational opportunities to orphaned and abandoned children. Bright Hope recently merged with Buckner International.

Tesema grew up in Shashamane, a small city in southern Ethiopia. When civil war escalated and the communist government conscripted young men for the front lines—essentially using them as cannon fodder—he escaped to Kenya at age 22.

• Pure Religion: Volunteers export hope to African orphans • Buckner Kenya leader pours himself into poor children • “If it cost me my life to save 1 child, I still would come” • How you can support ministries in Africa … • See Ken Camp's original Africa dispatches here.

Tesema spent the next two and one-half years in a refugee camp outside Nairobi.

An American missionary-evangelist befriended him while he was in the refugee camp, and that is when he committed his life to Christ.

Since Kenya did not allow all the refugees to resettle in their country permanently, Tesema applied to the United States and was accepted there. Working his way through school as a taxi driver in Dallas, he first attended the Christ for the Nations Institute and then earned a degree in Christian management from Dallas Baptist University. He also served as a minister at the Ethiopian Baptist Church in Dallas.

When he returned to Ethiopia with his wife to tend to some family affairs, he saw the needs in his home country, and he felt an unmistakable calling to help meet the needs of the most helpless and vulnerable—particularly orphaned and abandoned children.

He and his wife, Tegist, started their ministry with 20 children they rescued from the streets. They rented a house, a sewing machine and shoe-making equipment, and then they began training the youngsters as seamstresses, tailors and cobblers.

Tesema holds dual citizenship in the United States and Ethiopia, but he and his wife have chosen to invest their lives in caring for the needy of their country. Three years ago, they adopted three abandoned girls, each from a different family of origin. Their adopted daughters now are 4, 8 and 12.

“I think God is happy with us because we keep our attention on the needs of the poor,” he said.